Imagine, for a moment, that you cannot understand very simple numbers and calculations, such as 2 or 2 2. This change in mathematical skills, known as achalculia, was described by neurologist Salomon Henschen in 1925 and even pursues the world of science. Today.
What if it was said that an area of your brain is responsible for mathematical calculations?It would be like having a calculator built into your brain, wouldn’t it?In this sense, a calculation is a deficit that directly affects computational capacity due to acquired brain damage.
- Thecalculias are divided into two large groups according to deteriorated capacities and damaged areas.
- In general.
- The affected hemisphere is the left hemisphere.
- Responsible for logical reasoning.
Similarly, the classification of acalculias will depend on both the area of the affected left hemisphere and the degree of capacity change.
Primary acalculia is a defect in computational skills unrelated to other disorders, patients lose the ability to understand digital concepts and, as a result, combine them.
Major failures occur in the execution of operations and in more abstract problems, such as the use and interpretation of signals. Injuries are associated with the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere.
This wolf is considered the driver of our body, so its alteration results in an inability to change mathematical concepts.
Thus, we can differentiate two clear symptoms of primary acalculia
Secondary acalculia is the deterioration of math skills in association with other neuropsychological disorders. Therefore, secondary acalculia can lead to a deficit in linguistic, spatial and executive functions in general.
In short, we can group them into the following categories:
The most important thing is to keep in mind that symptoms are expressed both orally and in writing. Primary acalculia is a loss of the numerical concept, which can sometimes be confused with different aphasic symptoms.
It should be proved that the deficit is due to the loss of concept and not to a failure in verbal understanding of signs.
First, solving digital tasks requires a plan that integrates different mathematical concepts, to solve a sum, for example, it is necessary to understand the concept of sum.
Second, most mathematical problems require abstract reasoning. The lack of inhibition of the typical syndromes of frontal injury makes this process difficult by causing a lack of concentration.
Finally, the selective attention and sequential integration required by digital operations are affected by poor integration of visual and/or auditory stimuli.
As mentioned above, the frontal lobe is the conductor of the brain; If there are failures, it will be more difficult to organize the information in a way that helps solve the problem.
Acalculia can be observed in affasic people, as long as their language skills are affected; in Broca’s aphasia, for example, the deficit manifests itself in the syntax applied to the calculation; in alexica acalculia, in turn, the deficit correlates with reading difficulties.
A more explanatory example is pure alexia, in which difficulties in the verbal and literal interpretation of written language are evident in the misinterpretation of numbers, sizes and hierarchies.
In agrafia, acalculia may appear related to inability to write amounts, so the type of acalculia will depend on the type of agrafia.
In Wernicke’s aphasia, for example, the patient has errors in copying dictated numbers, to resolve this lack of verbal comprehension, these patients often invent numbers and give them their own order.
The key is to understand that this is a very different disorder to dyscalculia, which consists of a developmental and learning problem, and therefore requires other strategies in intervention.
In turn, the diagnosis of acalculia is usually in the hands of neuropsychologists, who use various tests, in which the person must perform written mental arithmetic operations, successive operations, interpretation of arithmetic signs and alignment of numbers in columns.
Treatment of primary acalcasia will depend on the type of injury and its severity. Because lost nerve tissue cannot be recovered, rehabilitation usually focuses on one goal: to teach new strategies based on neuroplasticity.
While recovery is never complete, tools should be worked to improve a person’s adaptation, on the other hand, the treatment of secondarycalculies will vary depending on the associated disorder.
Advances in technology provide information tools and applications that are a hope for these patients.